Tuesday, 24 March 2009

9 Abuse in the Sea Org

To
be in Scientology’s Sea Organization is to be part of the
movement’s self-styled elite: but some former insiders have bitter
memories of the harsh conditions and abusive treatment.

Workers
at International Base are all members of the Sea Organization, which
L. Ron Hubbard, the movement’s founder, once described as
Scientology’s aristocracy.

Aristocrats
or not, some former staffers at Scientology’s base near Hemet,
California, say they suffered abuse from the movement’s leader
David Miscavige and his lieutenants.

The
original Sea Org served as crew members on a small fleet of ships
that Hubbard sailed around the Mediterranean after quitting England
in 1967.

Today,
Sea Org members still wear naval-style uniforms, practise parade
ground drilling and observe a strict disciplinary code. Recruits sign
a billion-year contract in which they swear to work for Scientology
in this life and millions of future lives.

The
Sea Org’s motto is “revenimus”: we come back. There is even
provision for a 21-year break at the start of each lifetime to allow
time for loyal officers to grow up.

Sea
Org members give up everything to devote their lives to Scientology.
But life inside this supposedly elite cadre has little of the
aristocratic about it.

Many
former members have recalled working 14 hours a day or more, six or
seven days a week for 50 dollars a week. Scientology provides meals
and living quarters, which sometimes amount to little more than
cramped dormitories.

But
according to some former members, the military-style discipline is
often gratuitously abusive.

Jeff
Hawkins described something called Severe Reality Adjustments, or
SRAs. “It means to forcibly get someone ‘with the programme’ by
screaming at them, threatening them.”

Chuck
Beatty, another former Base staffer, recalled overhearing someone
being trained to deliver an SRA. “He was screaming and also
slamming his hand on a table during the drilling I overheard,” he
recalled. For a good 20 minutes the trainee bawled out his training
partner.

And by
the 1990s, former members recall, Scientologists were talking about
delivering “face-ripping” SRAs.

Former
Sea Org member Martin Ottmann was recruited into Scientology in his
native Germany. But between August 1990 and July 1992, he served at
Flag Base, in Clearwater, Florida, one of the movement’s biggest
centres.

“We,
the staff at the FSO [Flag Service Organization], worked the whole
day and the whole week for $30 or less, and we got treated for that
like we were criminals,” he wrote in an affidavit sworn out in
April 19, 1996.

He
recalled one incident in which an executive bawled out his junior in
quite spectacular terms. “One day I saw her sitting at her desk and
B___ standing directly in front of her.

“He
was screaming at the top of his lungs directly in her face. I had
never heard anyone scream like that. It sounded as if he wanted to
blast her against the wall behind her.”

Just
as Ottmann’s superiors screamed at him, so he screamed at his
subordinates, he wrote. And he also described incidents in which Sea
Org members physically attacked the people working under them –
something he had done himself, he admitted.

In
February 2002, Ottmann submitted a detailed citizen’s complaint
about Scientology’s activities to the U.S. Attorneys Office. A
letter acknowledging receipt was all the official response he got, he
said.

More
than 10 years on, the regime at Clearwater had not changed, according
to two other former members. In 2005, Donna Shannon and her husband
served briefly in the Sea Org there.

Shannon
saw colleagues delivering SRAs on a regular basis. Four of five
senior officers would gang up on one person, she recalled. “They’d
get right in his face. This would last anywhere from five to ten
minutes to half an hour.”

This
kind of behaviour was the norm in the Sea Org, she said: “You get
bullied, you bully the guy under you, who is supposed to bully the
next guy down.”

Some
people folded under the pressure, she said: but others thrived. “Some
people take to it like a duck to water.” After a few months of
that, she and her husband left the Sea Org – and Scientology –
for good.

Bruce
Hines, a former Sea Org member at the Hemet Base, recalled an
incident involving David Miscavige. One summer in the early 1990s a
storm caused a flash flood through the base. “Some of the buildings
sustained some minor damage from water and mud,” he said.

Miscavige
summoned all the personnel to a meeting and bawled out the staff
responsible for maintaining the grounds.

“He
said that they had not responded fast enough or well enough or
something like that. He berated them for many, many minutes, his
voice booming over the PA system in the meeting room. At one point he
yelled at the top of his voice, "F___ you! F___ you!”

“Ranting
and raving,” was how another witness described Miscavige’s
behaviour. “That’s when I went – ‘No, this has gone too
far,’” he added. He left soon afterwards.

Other
punishments meted out at the Hemet base included being thrown, fully
clothed, into the lake. This is a throwback to one of the punishments
handed out by the movement’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard in the late
1960s and early 70s. Back then, it was known as “over-boarding”.

In
those days, Hubbard and the original members of the Sea Org were
sailing around the Mediterranean. When a ship was docked in harbour,
crew members deemed to have failed in their duties would be thrown
overboard as punishment.

The
only ship out at the land-locked Base is a folly built in Hubbard’s
honour: a full-scale replica of a clipper – complete with a sauna,
jacuzzi and swimming pool. So for years people were over-boarded at
the lake.

As
Master at Arms, John Peeler used to supervise such over-boardings.
Whoever was to be punished would be pushed into the lake from a
bridge that went from the shore over to a small island in the lake,
he explained.

“The
crew member is allowed to take off his shoes, jewellery or watch and
that's it,” he said. “You get pushed in by the MAA [Master at
Arms] with the Chaplain reading something about leaving your sins to
be washed away by the sea.”

Whole
divisions working at the base – up to 30 people – could be
over-boarded in a single ceremony if their results were not
considered satisfactory, he recalled.

One
occasion he recalled vividly. “An elderly lady froze up in the
water and couldn't swim herself to the side.” He had to jump in
himself and help her to the shore. The last he had heard, they had
switched the punishment to the swimming pool.

Another
punishment involved being made to run around buildings for hours in
the summer heat, which in California can exceed 100 degrees.

Hawkins
remembers that after one such punishment his feet were so badly
blistered they got infected and he was laid up for a week with blood
poisoning.

Another
Hemet veteran remembers seeing people out running in the summer heat
in full uniform wearing hard leather shoes. “One person was even
being pushed around the pole in a wheelchair. They were all in
uniform and that was in the middle of July, in the middle of the
afternoon when it was the hottest.”

Both
over-boarding and the running program were introduced by
Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard when he ran the movement. In
his day, the crew of Scientology’s ships got thrown into the
harbour in their clothes. Sometimes they were loosely tied up and
even blindfolded.

But
the most severe punishment inside Scientology’s Sea Org is known as
the Rehabilitation Project Force: the RPF.

2 comments:

Thank you for your blog. I was in Scientology for over 20 years as a public, staff member and twice in the Sea Org. Now out for 5 years and just now finally getting my life back in order. These guys at Int who are speaking out are courageous and true to the spirit that led them to Scientology initially, to learn and speak the truth.

Scientology maintains this public facade that no where matches the paranoia, deception and abuse that goes on behind the scenes. It's why they have coined the term "acceptable truth" to deal with the public and media. To steal a joke from the laywers, "How do you know when a Scientologist is lying?" "Their lips are moving" Probably more true of a Scientologist than a lawyer.

About the Author

Jonny Jacobsen is the author of the Infinite Complacency website tracking violence and abuse in Scientology and also contributes to Tony Ortega's Underground Bunker on the same subject.. He trained as a journalist in the late 1980s with the Birmingham Post and Mail group and spent several years freelancing in Scotland before moving to Paris in 1994, where he is still based. His first investigative piece on Scientology was in 1996 as a reporter/producer with Radio France International. You can reach him at jonnymcj(AT)hotmail.com.

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A Piece of Blue Sky

Click on the image to order the new edition of Jon Atack's definitive history of Hubbard-era Scientology. To learn more about the battle to get the original version published read "Atack Unchained" below.

For the Record

I approached Scientology several times to get their response to the allegations set out in the first section, "Violence and abuse in the Sea Org" regarding David Miscavige's violence and the abuse at the International Base: nothing so far.

Unless otherwise specified, all quotes come from interviews with the author.

Don't get me started: If you want to know why I write about Scientology, read this account published in Scotland's Sunday Herald on November 8, 2009. Since they never properly formatted it on their website I've also posted it here, in a slightly more readable form.

The Paris Trial: In answer to a question from a reader: these are my first-hand reports from the court, not a round-up of the French press coverage.